Discussion Topics for Today's Classroom

Posts Categorized: IT and Politics

Carly Fiorina said she will use technology — and votes by smart phones — to solve issues such as immigration and the economy if elected president. “The technology for a citizen government exists. There’s an app for this actually,” the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard said. “We need to use technology to reengage citizens in the… Read more »

Many Amazon Associates are unaware of the full scale of Amazon’s global footprint. To cater to their global audience and because of differences like currency, language, shipping, and digital rights restrictions, Amazon has created 14 different storefronts around the world. 11 of these offer both physical and digital goods in countless categories. 12 of these… Read more »

The European Court of Justice recently ruled that US firms signed up to what is called a “Safe Harbour scheme” with European companies could no longer be automatically considered to provide “adequate protection” to personal data they had received from the EU. The “Safe Harbour scheme” was put in place to allow European companies to store data… Read more »

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in the US, have adapted a low cost MakerBot 3D printer to print with biological materials. The team hope their work could one day lead to a world in which transplants are no longer necessary to repair damaged organs. Source: BBC News Date: October 27, 2015 Link: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34505242 Discussion 1) The video talks… Read more »

Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict. Source: New York Times Date: October 27th, 2015 Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-presence-near-undersea-cables-concerns-us.html Discussion 1) Assume… Read more »

Ordering Apple to access data against its will would be akin to making a reluctant drug company carry out a lethal injection, a US judge has said. Judge James Orenstein was hearing a US government request to make Apple retrieve information from a locked iPhone seized by law enforcement officers. The judge expressed doubt that he… Read more »

“WikiLeaks on Wednesday published personal information of CIA Director John Brennan after a brazen hack attack of the top spy’s personal email account.” says CNN Source: CNN Date: October 21st, 2015 Link: http://us.cnn.com/2015/10/21/politics/john-brennan-hacked-cia-director/index.html Discussion 1) The CIA is saying that the hacking of the Director of the CIA’s e-mail “is something that could happen to anyone”. Do you… Read more »

Microsoft is returning to court to continue its fight against the US government’s demand that it hand over emails stored at an Irish data centre. The messages involved are alleged to contain details of narcotics sales. In 2014, a court ruled in favour of the government’s claim that because it had jurisdiction over the US-based… Read more »

The rise of the “gig economy” has given Democrats from Hillary Clinton on down a tough issue to wrestle with, one that wedges them uncomfortably between Silicon Valley money and millennial digital natives on one side, and organized labor and disempowered workers on the other — in a fight playing out largely in America’s deep-blue… Read more »

By manipulating its search results, Google could decide the next election. The world’s most-used search engine is so powerful and national elections are so tight, that even a tiny tweak in Google’s (GOOGL, Tech30) secret algorithm could swing the 2016 presidential election, according to Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral… Read more »